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Marsquakes Then and Now: Revisiting Viking With Insight

Description: 

The Viking 2 lander, operating in the late 1970s, deployed a seismometer on its deck, but its ability to detect seismic activity was severely limited by wind-induced noise and the lack of direct ground coupling. Over 560 sols, it recorded approximately 2,100 hours of data, yielding only two signatures that could be interpreted as seismic events [1]. In contrast, the InSight mission briefly operated its SEIS instrument on the deck before deploying it on the ground under a wind and thermal shield, significantly improving noise isolation and enabling the detection of numerous seismic events [2].

Using the comodulation method of Charalambous et al. (2021) [3], which effectively validated events and phases in InSight’s on-ground data, we revisited the Viking 2 dataset, exploiting the similar wind-noise dependence observed in both missions’ deck-mounted operations. We detected no seismic events during InSight’s brief on-deck phase; however, our analysis of Viking data uncovered 10 candidate events that could not be attributed to wind or lander noise. We further examined these events for their potential seismic origins by comparing them to seismic signatures of InSight detections of known tectonic and impact sources. These results provide new insights into Martian seismic activity during the Viking era and demonstrate the potential for enhanced on-deck seismic detection using modern instruments and advanced processing techniques.

References:

[1] Lazarewicz, A. R. (2023). Viking Marsquakes 1976—Seismic Archaeology. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 128(7), e2022JE007660.

[2] Ceylan, S., et al., (2022). The marsquake catalogue from InSight, sols 0–1011. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 333, 106943.

[3] Charalambous, C., et al., (2021). A comodulation analysis of atmospheric energy injection into the ground motion at InSight, Mars. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 126(4), e2020JE006538.

Session: Modern Waveform Processing and Engineering Datasets - Accessibility, Quality Control, and Metadata [Poster]

Type: Poster

Date: 4/17/2025

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Constantinos

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Poster Number: 50

Authors